Shamelessness Is Trump’s Superpower

Donald Trump, who was well on his way to becoming one of the most corrupt presidents in American history even before he said it would be “stupid” for the United States not to accept a plane worth hundreds of millions of dollars from Qatar to replace Air Force One, repeatedly attacks his adversaries in part to mask his own violations of the law and the Constitution.

Donald Moynihan, a professor of public policy at the University of Michigan, argued in an email that Trump’s repeated description of Democrats and liberal programs as immoral is designed to win support for his agenda:

Identity politics, Moynihan wrote,

For Trump, Moynihan argued,

Trump does this, Moynihan wrote, “even while making ‘fraud’ a central trope of his administration in order to justify cutting government services.”

During his first and second terms in office, Trump radically altered the Republican Party’s moral guidelines to make self-enrichment a routine fact of political life.

Matthew Dallek, a political historian at George Washington University, is outspoken in his criticism of Trump.

“Trump,” Dallek wrote by email,

Trump’s self-dealing, Dallek argued, has become part and parcel of his overwhelming assault on American laws and traditions:

In fact, Dallek argues that Trump uses his profiteering as a tool to mobilize supporters:

Sarah Kreps, a political scientist at Cornell, emailed her responses to my queries about Trump and corruption:

In this context, Kreps continued,

I asked Kreps and others whether Trump has been able to get away with self-dealing and profiting from his political position because he is so brazen — so transparent in his crypto deals and in the sale of Trump bibles and Trump sneakers, completely without guilt or shame.

Kreps replied:

Douglas Kriner, a political scientist at Cornell, elaborated on Kreps’s point:

In seeking to explain the Democrats’ vulnerability to Trump’s attacks, Kriner cited Trump’s 2024 transgender ads and their message that

The transgender commercials, Kriner argued, focused on

Trump’s victories in 2016 and 2024, despite his liabilities, raise a significant question. Bo Rothstein, a political scientist at the University of Gothenburg, wrote by email: